From Riding to Writing

     The wordplay of the title only works if you read it out loud quickly, but I am pretty proud of it anyway.

     So I realize that I have been out of touch for a while.  The middle of last week my son and I went out on his big birthday ride.  I'm not saying that it has taken a week for me to be able to sit back down at my desk after that...but today is the first day that I have not had extra padding on my chair.

     The ride went great.  The weather was overcast but we had no rain.  It did start hailing about two hours after we finished so I was grateful that we headed out when we did.  We loaded up our four water bottles and 8 energy bars; we aired up our tires, packed our backpack and set off with mom and the girls waving from the house.  We hit the first intersection and climbed the first hill to the second intersection...and decided that this was a grand place to take our first water break.  We hit the downhill side and then trudged up the next hill to the third intersection and mutually agreed that it was time for a rest stop and power bar break.  Fifteen minutes.  One mile.  Two stops.  Look out Tour de France.  My biggest consolation was that the fifteen year old was huffing and puffing just as much as I was...nearly as much as I was...for about two minutes and then he was ready to go again.

     Everything went really smooth.  Our rest stops were right where we needed them to be.  We were right on schedule and Big Mister had a great time whooping and hollering as he charged down the substantial downhills.  I really appreciated knowing the route well so that I could tell the boy (and myself), "Right after this big set of hills is a drop and rest stop,"  or "We'll meet up at the top of this hill, right before the turnoff to the bike path."  Kiddo had a good ride and a fun birthday filled with legos.

     We've done a couple of short rides in this past week, but now that the big ride is over, my attention is turning from Riding to Writing.  Have to admit, I still am so internally impressed by the word play that I had to use it again.

     My job search is going well.  I have a really strong chance to get one of a couple of different positions...which start end of summer-ish.  So likely I won't have a steady position for another month or two.  We've gone over our budget and can make it work, but this is going to be a season of lots of disposable time and little disposable income.  And did I mention that I have US District court Jury duty for 90 days starting the end of June?  So no big trips our of Fairbanks that last more than a weekend.

     Instead I'm diving into Freelance writing.  I have submitted some proposals to magazines and signed up on a Freelance site.  I will be working on content for magazines and blogs and websites and possibly some grants.

     What I found while I was setting all this up was that there were some similarities to preparing for the bike trip with my son.  First and foremost, I needed to get over my fear of pain and rejection and dive in.  I put off training for the bike ride because I knew it would hurt to get back to biking.  I spent a fair amount of time researching freelancing and looking at different proposals and organizations because I hate getting rejection letters.  I just needed to commit and dive in and grow as I went.

     So here I go, trying to become a writer.

     My seat is still sore...maybe I'll use that padding for one more day.